Chapter One
"Mr. Whittington Meets Miss Fleck"
BROOKLYN, 1922.
The last soulful groans of the saxophone faded away like a train receding into the distance, chased away by the tinkling, tinny notes of the piano and the gentle whisper of the cymbals, and when at last the song was over, the patrons of The Gypsy Cafe hooted and clapped their approval, raising glasses and blowing rings of smoke. The band leader, a mellow old black man, took a drink and smiled, his teeth looking white and friendly against the blackness of his beard.
"Well, thank you very much, ladies and gents," he said in his warm, growly voice. "Thanks. This next number is a little somethin' I came up with when me and the band here was sittin' in a diner in Chicago. Ain't very long, but I think you'll like it all right."
More applause, and then the band went into an upbeat number. It was then that Mr. Jay Whittington, followed by one of his friends, entered the cafe and deftly esconced themselves into a booth. A lady took their order-coffee and strudel-and left them to relax and examine their surroundings.
"They have live music, too, hmm?" Mr. Whittington observed approvingly. "You pick 'em well, Mr. Garland."
"Aw, for Pete's sake, Jay, this ain't Europe. Call me Rodger," his companion replied. "We've known each other for almost two days. In America, that practically makes you family."
Mr. Whittington chuckled. "Very well, Rodger. Got a light?"
He did, and before long their booth was filled with smoke and their coats were slung over their seats.
"What a way to unwind after a day like ours, huh?" Rodger stretched and sat back. "Music, companionship, coffee...well, not coffee, that lady ain't back with it yet, but you catch my drift. And tomorrow we'll see if my pictures turned out any good."
"I'm sure they'll be a fine addition. You do excellent work."
"Thanks, thanks. When are you lookin' to have this book released?"
"As soon as I can." Mr. Whittington glanced around the room for the waitress but didn't see her. "I haven't set a precise date. I'll finish it when I finish it."
"Ah, that sort of talk drives me up the wall," laughed Rodger. "You know we reporters are all about deadlines, ha! Speaking of which, my dad's a reporter-used to take pictures at Coney all the time. You know, he might be able to produce some nice shots for you. I'll ask."
"That would be perfect. Tell him I'm most interested in Coney's final season-the 1907 season."
"Gotcha."
At that moment, their conversation was interrupted by applause; another song had ended.
"Thank you, ladies and gents, thank you very much," said the band leader. He got up off his stool and walked into the spotlight. "Now I've got somethin' a little different for y'all now. This song's got a story behind it, so here goes. I was walkin' by where the ol' Coney Island fairgrounds used to be. Band members said it was worth a look, but I don't see how they thought that-place is like one big ashtray now. Ha!"
A moment of laughter, and then the man continued.
"Ha ha, yes. There were some posters around, and I guess that was alright, but all of a sudden I hear this sing-song little voice behind me askin' me what I was doin' there. So I turn around and I see this crazy-lookin' little lady with a crutch and a twisted leg. No idea where the hell she came from; it was like she appeared or somethin'. Couldn't see her face too well on account o' the fact she had this long black veil on. I told her I was lookin' around, an' she started going on about how there wasn't nothin' to see-it was all burned up and gone. That's all she kept sayin'. It was all burned up and gone. Then she sat down and started drinkin', and I got myself out of there."
Rodger laughed, and to Mr. Whittington's confusion, most of the cafe began murmuring and looking knowingly at each other. They seemed to know who this crazy lady was.
"When I got back to the hotel, I told the cat at the desk what I saw, and he busted out laughin' at me. He said I just met the legendary Miss Ariel Fleck. So I says huh? A-E-riel Fleck? Who the hell is that? And he tells me everybody 'round here knows her; she used to be in the freak show at Coney, and after it burned down she just stayed. Simple as that. Decided she wasn't gonna go nowhere. Just stay there. And every day she wanders around gettin' herself tipsy and sleepin' on the sidewalk and pukin' all over the pier. Brooklyn's little sweetheart."
Everyone laughed again, except for Mr. Whittington.
"I went back later and gave her a dollar. She was half-asleep, but she had enough sense left to thank me, and I told her I'd write her a song. She mumbled somethin' I couldn't hear, so I just blessed her in the name of the Lord and went home. That night, I wrote this little melody here. I dedicate this to you, Miss A-E-riel Fleck, you crazy old girl. This is called 'Long Black Veil'."
He motioned to his band, and a folksy, upbeat sort of a ballad rose from the guitars and the piano. Then the old man sang:
Fifteen years ago, on a calm summer night
A fire broke out beneath Coney's lights
Her home was destroyed, and she took to the streets
It's a cold, cold world
For a young circus freak
He nodded his head and went into the refrain:
And she walks the pier in a long black ve-e-e-eil
Drinks herself blind when the night winds wa-a-a-ail
Singin' nobody knows
Nobody sees
There's nothing left for me-e-e-e.
It almost seemed absurd that such a cheery-sounding song could have such melancholy lyrics, but the beat was steady, and the cafe smiled and tapped their toes along. Everyone but Mr. Whittington.
Feathers in her hair, and fists full of beer
She walks all alone, and she sheds not a tear
But sometimes in the night, when the cold winds moan
In a long black veil
She cries o'er her home
And then, once more:
And she walks the pier in a long black ve-e-e-eil
Drinks herself blind when the night winds wa-a-a-ail
Singin' nobody knows
Nobody sees
There's nothing left for me-e-e-e.
One last strum of the guitar, and the cafe applauded enthusiastically.
"Ha, the ol' Negro sure can write a song!" said Rodger in appreciation. "Fits her just right, too! Say, did our coffee get here yet? No? Hell, I could've grown some and ground it myself in the time we've been...oh, here it comes!"
The waitress apologized for the wait and presented them with the coffee tray and the strudels.
"Very nice! Very nice. Pass the sugar, Jay. Ha, we're having a gay old time, ain't we? I'm glad we came." He stopped when he noticed that Mr. Whittington was not listening. He was still looking at the stage with a strange, almost injured expression on his face.
"Jay? Jay, what's wrong?"
"A freak from Coney," Mr. Whittington said softly.
"Huh?"
"Ariel Fleck. Is that what he said her name was?"
"Yeah, you heard the ol' codger. A-E-riel Fleck. What of it?"
"She lived at Coney. She was there before the fire. And she's still there now..."
Rodger's face split into a grin. "Oh, right, that'd be good for the book, wouldn't it? You could ask her all about it. Probably have to bribe her though. She ain't much of a talker, and when she does it's usually just a bunch of griping."
"You've spoken with her?"
"I gotta pass by her quite a bit," said Rodger with the air of someone describing a bus route. "I usually chuck a nickel or two at her, buy her a beer, stuff like that."
"I see."
Mr. Whittington's mood had suddenly become subdued, almost frail, and this confused Rodger.
"Jay?" he ventured quietly, "What's eatin' you?"
"When we're done here, I want to head over her way and see if we can't talk to her," Mr. Whittington said. He coughed gruffly, and his elegant composure returned. "It would be just the thing for my book."
The street lamps were slowly flickering to life when Mr. Whittington and his companion finally grabbed their coats and headed out into the streets of Brooklyn. Coney Island was not far from here; they could smell the ocean and hear the sea gulls cackling as they went along, pulling their coats tighter around themselves. It was technically spring, if one went by the calendar, but the warmth had yet to arrive. The other people on the street walked along with similar stiffness, pulling down cloches and adjusting scarves.
"And she doesn't have a home?" Mr. Whittington inquired, wondering if she had to endure such cold days as this with no place to warm herself. He'd been asking Rodger similar questions since they'd left.
"Not that I know of," Rodger replied. "During the winter I don't see her as much. I'm guessing some shelter takes in her in once the snow rolls around. Tough lookin' little chick. Fifteen years on the street and she ain't dead. Pretty impressive."
"Any relations?"
"Damn, Jay, you oughta be a reporter too. Ha ha! Oh, alright, alright, I was only ragging. What did you ask again? Never mind, I remember. Relations. Uh, none that I know about. If she had some they'd surely be doing something for her, don't you think?"
But Mr. Whittington had lapsed back into his strange, contemplative silence.
"Jay," Rodger persisted.
"I heard you. I...well, I suppose she must not have anybody then. You're right."
After that they walked in silence. Rodger led the way, bewildered by his friend's bizarre change of behavior over some homeless woman but relieved that he was no longer asking questions. Mr. Whittington, following behind, peered into alleyways and over fences, trying to determine how close they were to the sea. The temperature was far from pleasant.
"Okay, we're almost there," Rodger finally said. "Now, I can't guarantee for certain she'll be here, but she usually is."
To their right, the ground was gradually dissolving into sand, and now they could see and hear the gray, lapping waves of the Atlantic ocean, perpetually hissing and charging forward onto the shore. To their left a long wooden fence stretched out a long way, covered in faded old posters. When Mr. Whittington peeked through a broken board, he was presented with the vast, windswept old plot where Coney Island, America's Playground, had once stood, drenched in light, glistening and glimmering like a fairytale, a slice of heaven rising by the sea, where freaks and music and elephants and dreams ran wild.
Now it was completely gone. There was nothing left, nothing but the ghostly faded advertisments cheerfully announcing the arrival of so-and-so the actor or advertising a show. Had no one told them Coney was gone? Mr. Whittington felt as though he were walking through a mausoleum.
"Cheerful joint, huh?" chuckled Rodger with a brightness that was almost irreverent. "Get a load of those old advertisements. Notice something special about 'em?"
Mr. Whittington contemplated them, reading the old captions: 3-Foot Man! Girl with two heads-must be seen to be believed! Phantasma, city of wonders! The honorable Mr. Y. presents marvels, astonishments, human prodigies! The Ooh-La-La Girl, 5 shows daily! Christine Daae, soprano of the century!
"Figure it out yet?"
He hadn't.
"Then I'll tell you." Rodger grinned. "All the eyes are scraped out of all the faces."
Mr. Whittington spun around to the wall again. It was true. The eyes were all gone! Suddenly he was looking upon a whole ghostly crowd of hollow, eyeless, antiquated people of yore, frozen and blind in their faded old world. "Who did this?" he asked breathlessly.
"Who do you think?"
He looked into the face of Christine Daae where she smiled pleasantly out from her poster, her eyes empty sockets...
"Hey!" Rodger whispered urgently. "Hey! Jay! There she is. There's ol' Ariel."
About a stone's throw away Mr. Whittington could see what appeared to be a pile of rags huddled against the fence.
"Can't tell if she's asleep or not. Let's get closer. Arieeeel," crooned Rodger fondly, as though he were calling a beloved dog. "Arieeeel dear, are you awake?"
The pile of rags moved with a grunt, which sent some bottles clattering onto their sides.
"Uh huh. She's up. C'mere and meet her."
Mr. Whittington walked over, knelt down, and was immediately saddened by the deplorable state of the filthy, drunken woman slumped in front of him.
Miss Ariel Fleck had a face like a broken old Victorian doll, pale and round, with dark circles around her closed eyes, and on her head was a cloche with a stringy old feather that concealed almost all of her little black bob. Under her oversized overcoat, he could see a flimsy old skirt that exposed her little calves and ankles. One leg was substantially thinner than the other and bent at an unnatural angle. Her black stockings were riddled with holes, her shoes were scuffed beyond hope of repair, and in her hands was a long black veil, just as the old man had said. She was surrounded by empty beer bottles and a crutch.
"Arieeeel," Rodger went on cheerfully. "Meet a friend of mine, dearie. He's never seen Coney before."
One of Miss Fleck's eyes snapped open, followed slowly by the other, and her sad, dreamy eyes focused on Mr. Whittington, who could only look speechlessly back.
"Coney Isle," she mumbled in a sad, sing-song voice, and the with her breath came the strong stench of alcohol. "There's nothing left. Nothing to see. All burned up and gone. Gone, s' all burned mmmph n' gone."
"So I've heard," replied Rodger in that obscenely jolly tone. "Well, I've got a friend here who'd like to hear all about ol' Coney. He's writing a book about it. This is Mr. Whittington, Ariel."
"Hello, Miss Fleck," Mr. Whittington eventually managed to say, but she just stared at him, blankly, no sadness, joy, or anything in the dark green ocean of her eyes.
"You goin' to bed now, Ariel? Sleepy?" Rodger asked.
She neither moved nor spoke. She only stared.
"You goin' to bed?" Rodger repeated.
She blinked hard and slumped over onto the pavement, knocking more bottles over, and made no move to sit back up. It seemed that she did want to go to sleep.
"Alrighty then, we won't pester you any further tonight. Maybe we'll pop by tomorrow, okay, cutie?"
No response.
"It's a date then. Goodnight." Rodger stood back up and turned to his companion. "C'mon Jay, let's get the hell out of here. I'm freezing."
Mr. Whittington was still for a moment, and then suddenly he pulled off his white scarf. He knelt down and gently wound it around Miss Fleck's exposed neck. She didn't move, but looked at him.
"I'll come back tomorrow at around noon, Miss Fleck," Mr. Whittington told her, slowly and clearly. "And I'll bring along a sandwich and some pop for you. That would be alright, wouldn't it?"
She kept on staring at him and made an unintelligible sound in her throat that sounded like an affirmative.
"Very well, then." Mr. Whittington rose. "I'll be back tomorrow. Oh, and you needn't return that scarf...you can have it. Goodbye." He decided that 'goodnight' was a rather cruel thing to say to someone sleeping on a sidewalk, and with that, he and Rodger headed back the way they came.
Without his scarf, Mr. Whittington began to develop a headache from the cold, and so the two men scraped together some change and hailed a taxi.
"You shouldn't have done that, Jay," sighed Rodger as they settled into their seats. "Nickels are one thing, but now she knows you're the type of guy who pays it forward, and you can bet she's gonna milk that for all it's worth. Oh, I know she looked pretty quiet and cracked up, but when she's sober, she's... kind of a bitch. Chucked a rock at me once, she did." At his friend's silence, he continued, "Plus, that was a swell scarf."
"I can get another," Mr. Whittington replied. He looked out the window, watching Brooklyn fly past him in a blur of smoke and lights. "When are you going to speak with your father?"
"Next chance I get. Probably Tuesday. You really goin' to see ol' Ariel tomorrow?"
"Why wouldn't I? I promised."
"Chances are she didn't hear you anyway. You could get away with it."
"Even so, I ought to."
"Have it your way, then." Rodger slapped his shoulder good-naturedly. "But when she takes you to the cleaners, don't come cryin' to me. Hopefully you'll make the money back in royalties."
"Mmm."
He was silent for the rest of the ride, except to wish Rodger a good evening when they arrived at his apartment and inform him that he would be at the library from nine to noon; after that he was headed over to see Miss Fleck. He could show him the developed photographs at dinner that evening. A shaking of hands, a vigorous Brooklyn farewell, and then Mr. Whittington headed into his rented abode.
It was the sort of dwelling typical of a young bachelor on holiday: minimally decorated, relatively tidy, and filled with practical things such as typewriters, umbrellas, books, and ink pens. There was a serviceable old couch next to the window that often served as an impromptu bed for a feverishly typing, coffee-crazed Mr. Whittington, but tonight his thoughts were too deep for writing. As he let himself sink into the faded red cushions, his mind kept wandering back to the old man's words:
And he tells me everybody 'round here knows her; she used to be in the freak show at Coney, and after it burned down she just stayed. Simple as that. Decided she wasn't gonna go nowhere. Just stay there.
Mr. Whittington was not a man unaquainted with grief. He understood the pain of having one's course in life suddenly derailed by tragedy, but fifteen years of sleeping on a boardwalk? Sure, her leg was in bad shape, but he'd seen worse-looking women doing all sorts of odd jobs. What on earth was inducing her to stay there? For the first time in quite a while, Mr. Whittington was consumed by something other than his book-in-progress, and he continued in this frame of mind until, finally, he rolled over and went to sleep.
Meanwhile, on the pier overlooking the sea, Miss Fleck slept soundly through the bitter cold, surrounded by her menagerie of hollow-eyed guardians and her cache of beer bottles, her face nestled in the warmth of his white scarf.
Author's Note: Thank you for reading my humble story. I can't believe you got past the crap summary. Now for a few notes you should take note of!
1. Everybody who leaves me a review gets a link to a Trio-related illustration (I'm an artiste) of some sort as a thank you. Aren't I manipulative? It may or may not have something to do with the chapter. Depends on my mood. This chapter's picture is Miss Fleck holding a dove. Steal it. Download it. Plagarize it all over the net.
2. This story was written back in April, and is based off of the original stage directions. That's why Fleck is alone. At the time, she was. Nowadays that's no longer true, and the other two freaks are with her in the beginning. The story is set in stone now. If tomorrow they re-write the LND script to make Miss Fleck a weed-smoking vacuum salesperson in a yellow submarine, I'm NOT changing my story.
3. The characters' names, familial relationships to each other, and pre-Phantasma ailments are based on what the actors themselves have said. All other details are my own. (FUN FACT: Before I discovered that Miss Fleck's name was Ariel, I was planning on naming her Frances Lavinia Fleck. So now those are her two middle names.)
4. This story is a seperate entity from "Freaks Never Die". What happens to the Trio in that story has no effect on what happens to them here, unless I say so.
5. My chapters usually run long. Next chapter starts the story-within-a-story narration, and they'll get substantially longer.
6. That "Long Black Veil" Song ain't mine. I just thought it would fit, and screwed up the lyrics to fit the situation. Don't sue me.
7. Updates will be once a week. If something goes terribly wrong with my ancient PC, I will inform you.